(U) Computation acceleration using dynamic memory

Abstract

Many computational applications require the repeated use of quantities, whose calculations can be expensive. In order to speed up the overall execution of the program, it is often advantageous to replace computation with extra memory usage. In this approach, computed values are stored and then, when they are needed again, they are quickly retrieved from memory rather than being calculated again at great cost. Sometimes, however, the precise amount of memory needed to store such a collection is not known in advance, and only emerges in the course of running the calculation. One problem accompanying such a situation is wasted memory space in overdimensioned (and possibly sparse) arrays. Another issue is the overhead of copying existing values to a new, larger memory space, if the original allocation turns out to be insufficient. In order to handle these runtime problems, the programmer therefore has the extra task of addressing them in the code.